Why ham for Easter?

I'm puzzled by this -- we're cooking for Easter this year, and my mom-in-law pretty much insists that it isn't Easter without ham.

Obviously, there wasn't any ham at the last supper, unless it was one of those legendary kosher hams I keep hearing about. I know that Mosaic law was suspended for Christianity, but it's still a big jump to start endorsing a meal that Jesus wouldn't eat.

I'm not fond of ham except as a condiment, or the really expensive stuff (e.g. prosciutto, serrano, etc.). One of my sisters-in-law won't eat lamb (her loss), so right now I'm aiming at braised brisket, with a ham salad on the side.

It's kind of like believing in the Easter bunny. The pig was considered good luck in pre-Christian Europe, so it's just one of those traditions that got carried forward -- and, like the Easter bunny, persists in many places. So no, it's not a jab at Judaism, and for many Christians, lamb is still the preferred Easter repast.

It has occurred to me that one might serve chicken and just say it was a grown-up Easter egg.

The explanation involving alleged associations of good luck with pigs in pre-Christian Europe strikes me as fanciful at best.

The choice of animal to be eaten at a given holiday has traditionally had to do with two central factors: 1) what animals are raised in a given region; 2) when the proper time for slaughter of those animals is. It is therefore first and foremost a matter of economics; the symbolic values of some foods -- e.g. lambs with Easter -- grew up in the context of pre-existing agricultural and economic necessities. Where there were few sheep raised, lamb for Easter was, of course, never an option but pork often was.

I don't want to post the "keen sense of the obvious" answer but here it is.

Generally, pigs are slaughtered at times of the year when 1) it is cold enough to hang the meat outside and 2) it is not so cold that the carcass will freeze before the butchering process is complete.

I believe that Easter generally falls within those parameters.

Personally, I have no citations to support my conclusions.

jlawrence01 wrote:I don't want to post the "keen sense of the obvious" answer but here it is.

Generally, pigs are slaughtered at times of the year when 1) it is cold enough to hang the meat outside and 2) it is not so cold that the carcass will freeze before the butchering process is complete.

I believe that Easter generally falls within those parameters.

Personally, I have no citations to support my conclusions.

jlawrence -- Exactly. Butchering in traditional societies is very seasonal. In northern Europe, the weather you describe extends into spring and the Easter season. In Mediterranean lands, where the weather is warmer, pig slaughtering typically was not done in the spring (which can begin already in February) but rather in the coldest period, in winter, either before Christmas, mid January or for Carnival. Of course, in those areas, the animals slaughtered in spring are lambs and kids, which naturally appear on the Easter table.

I always wondered the same...I dont follow any religion but I have been waiting to make this recipe below for the upcoming Easter since I found it last summer.

http://saveur.com/food/classic-recipes/ ... 52518.html

Without vouching for the accuracy of this or any other random internet source, this food history site includes discussions of a number of food-related Easter traditions. Here's the discussion of hot cross buns

ABOUT HOT CROSS BUNS

"The practice of eating special small cakes at the time of the Spring festival seems to date back at least to the ancient Greeks, but the English custom of eating spiced buns on Good Friday was perhaps institutionalized in Tudor times, when a London bylaw was introduced forbidding the sale of such buns except on Good Friday, at Christmas, and at burials. The first intimation we have of a cross appearing on the bun, in remembrance of Christ's cross, comes in Poor Robin's Amanack (1733): Good Friday comes this month, the old woman runs, with one or two a penny hot cross buns' (a version of the once familiar street-dry "One-a-penny, two-a penny, hot cross buns'). At this stage the cross was presumably simply incised with a knife, rather than piped on in pastry, as is the modern commercial practice. As yet, too, the name' of such buns was just cross buns: James Boswell recorded in his Life of Johnson (1791): 9 Apr. An. 1773 Being Good Friday I breakfasted with him and cross-buns.' The vact that they were generally sold hot, howeer, seems to have led by the early nineteenth century to the incorpordaion of hot into their name."
---An A-Z of Food & Drink, John Ayto [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 2002 (p. 164)

jlawrence01 wrote:I don't want to post the "keen sense of the obvious" answer but here it is.

Generally, pigs are slaughtered at times of the year when 1) it is cold enough to hang the meat outside and 2) it is not so cold that the carcass will freeze before the butchering process is complete.

I believe that Easter generally falls within those parameters.

If you slaughtered your pigs in the fall and cured and smoked hams over the winter, Eastertime is when they'd be ready to eat. And if you lived in the kind of northern climate where that kind of thing went on, you'd probably have few other appropriately festive options, particularly if Easter were early, as it is this year.

A prosaic explanation, but probably more likely than the pagan rituals suggested at this site and elsewhere.

As I indicated above, in those countries where circumstances permit extended slaughter of pigs, you could have fresh, as well as cured, pork products in the late winter/spring months. In warmer regions, where curing season was by necessity and thus traditionally limited to a short winter (and pig production was relatively more or less limited), fresh pork is generally not associated with spring or Easter but then those areas tend to have substantial production of sheep and goats (or or at least access to them from nearby places), the 'excess' young of these species are available and eaten only during the spring and so are featured at Easter table. In some parts of northern Europe where there has long been local large-scale production of sheep, lambs do find their way into the diet much as in southern Europe.

Does anyone have evidence of Easter ham as a significant custom anywhere outside North America?

Lamb certainly seems to predominate as the favored Easter dinner in most of Europe.

Antonius wrote:As I indicated above, in those countries where circumstances permit extended slaughter of pigs, you could have fresh, as well as cured, pork products in the late winter/spring months.

In most places where winters are long, and certainly in America, farmers traditionally reduced the amount of livestock they had to feed over winter by fall slaughter. So you wouldn't see much fresh meat of any kind in the very early spring.

JoelF -- How about rabbit?

Well, the idea of ham having pre-Christian roots may seem fanciful, but it apparently has enough credibility to appear in numerous reference works, including the Encyclopedia of Religion [MacMillan:New York] 1987, volume 5---(p. 558) -- "Among Easter foods the most significant is the Easter lamb, which is in many places the main dish of the Easter Sunday meal. Corresponding to the Passover lamb and to Christ, the Lamb of God, this dish has become a central symbol of Easter. Also popular among European and Americans on Easter is ham, because the pig was considered a symbol of luck in pre-Christian Europe."

Of course, I know enough of publishing to realize that just because something appears in a book, doesn't mean it's correct. But this is not the only source that makes a pagan connection to ham -- and it seems reasonable, since there are so many other pagan aspects attached to Easter. Also, while it might have been "what's for dinner" for much of European history, the fact that it became a recognized tradition suggests that there is something more at play than just availability. Perhaps it was the last ham before spring. Or the best ham. Or you were eating sausage all winter and now you got ham, because it's a special occasion. But it seems hard to imagine that something would become a cherished tradition if it was simply what you ate every day.

Cynthia wrote:the fact that it became a recognized tradition suggests that there is something more at play than just availability. Perhaps it was the last ham before spring. Or the best ham. Or you were eating sausage all winter and now you got ham, because it's a special occasion. But it seems hard to imagine that something would become a cherished tradition if it was simply what you ate every day.

Probably, you were eating potatoes, or cornmeal mush, or beans all winter and now you got ham because it was a special occasion.

It's hard to say how customs get started. Consider what ought to be a more traceable tradition: Thanksgiving turkey. What made turkey the meal of choice instead of venison or codfish, both of which were also served at Plymouth? But even though the tradition can't be more than a few hundred years old and is limited to just one country, no one knows quite how it came to be that vast majority of Americans eat turkey on Thanksgiving.

good question..being Greek Orthodox we always had and still have lamb on Easter..

Unlikely they were eating cornmeal or potatoes in Europe most of the time these traditions developed. They wished.

We are mixed faith and always seem to end up having a delicious spiral sliced ham (as a gift) in the freezer that we warm up round easter-passover time,
and follow up with some fab split pea soup soon after

still it seems there's no way it can make it on the table without a few smiles and someone remarking "good ham, grammy"
...courtesy of Annie Hall

JeffB wrote:Unlikely they were eating cornmeal or potatoes in Europe most of the time these traditions developed. They wished.

I did a bit of poking around, and as yet I haven't found where in Europe Easter ham is a tradition.

Swieconka

The blessing of the Easter food, or the "Swieconka" is a tradition dear to the heart of every Pole. Being deeply religious, he is grateful to God for all His gifts of both nature and grace, and, as a token of this gratitude, has the food of his table sanctified with the hope that spring, the season of the Resurrection, will also be blessed by God's goodness and mercy.

The usual fare on the Easter table includes ham and kielbasa, cakes of all kinds - particularly babka; eggs - some shelled or some decorated. There is usually a Paschal Lamb or "Baranek" made of butter, some cheese, horseradish, salt, vinegar and oil.

Maybe Bridgestone can chime in on a Swedish Easter, also.

Ed,

Thanks for posting that. Obviously, in the not too distant past, lots of Christian Europeans lived in areas where sheep were not widely available but were no less inclined to celebrate the most important Christian holiday than those who had access to lambs. As I indicated above, they ate what was available to them and, of course, in much of Europe the pig is, and for milennia has been, the primary source of meat. I've gathered a lot of material on this general topic for one of my research projects, though little of it is in English. In any event, pork in various forms has long been featured at Easter, though it seems clear that in modern times, as lamb has become more widely available, it's popularity has increased.

Antonius

gleam wrote:Swieconka

The blessing of the Easter food, or the "Swieconka" is a tradition dear to the heart of every Pole. Being deeply religious, he is grateful to God for all His gifts of both nature and grace, and, as a token of this gratitude, has the food of his table sanctified with the hope that spring, the season of the Resurrection, will also be blessed by God's goodness and mercy.

The usual fare on the Easter table includes ham and kielbasa, cakes of all kinds - particularly babka; eggs - some shelled or some decorated. There is usually a Paschal Lamb or "Baranek" made of butter, some cheese, horseradish, salt, vinegar and oil.

Maybe Bridgestone can chime in on a Swedish Easter, also.

While I don't dispute that ham is served in Poland on Easter, I note that the page cited is from the Polish-American Center, and it isn't clear on whether the Poles mentioned are Poles in Poland or Poles in America, nor when the custom may have begun. My research thus far indicates that while babka is pretty essential and special Easter soups and kielbasa are ubiquitous, ham is one of a number of meats that might be served.

This is another American site, but it offers a typical selection:

Memories of a Polish Easter wrote:Easter dinner began with the sharing of the blessed hard-boiled eggs, accompanied by an exchange of greetings of good health and happiness. Afterwards, everyone sat down to the table, which was set with the best linens.

Dinner was made up of baked ham, sausage, roast veal, roast pork, roast turkey or goose, as well as stuffed cabbage. There was also Easter soup, hard-cooked eggs, sauces, and relishes. Everpresent was the traditional Easter relish of beets and horseradish, (cwikla).

That seems different from "Easter ham" in the significant sense cited by JoelF, "that it isn't Easter without ham," which holds sway with a lot of Americans, as lamb does with most Orthodox Christians.

If this Swedish site is to be believed, lamb is also customary in Sweden, although perhaps less essential than herring:

Sweden.se: Celebrating the Swedish Way wrote:A traditional Easter lunch is likely to consist of different varieties of pickled herring, cured salmon and Jansson’s Temptation (potato, onion and pickled sprats baked in cream). The table is often laid like a traditional smörgåsbord. Spiced schnapps is also a feature of the Easter table. At dinner, people eat roast lamb with potatoes au gratin and asparagus or some other suitable side dish.

And I concur that pork was certainly eaten in historic Europe (although I might quibble about "the primary source of meat"*). However, that's not the question. The question is where and when a particular piece of pork -- the ham -- became the centerpiece of the Easter feast, and why?


*"Throughout the Middle Ages cattle provided the bulk of the meat consumed in cities...."

well, i called the Polish consulate in Chicago and the man there told me ham is commonly served on Easter in Poland. Though his English wasn't great and my Polish is non-existent, my impression was that it wasn't an essential part of the menu, but nevertheless quite common.

teatpuller wrote:well, i called the Polish consulate in Chicago and the man there told me ham is commonly served on Easter in Poland. Though his English wasn't great and my Polish is non-existent, my impression was that it wasn't an essential part of the menu, but nevertheless quite common.

teatpuller-

You called the Polish consulate just for the sake of research for this thread?! Why, thank you!